


pollen and stars and hinges

by magisterequitum



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 16:02:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Web of Stars feeds her psychic mind and she can be now. Reassurance in the form of something new and all together frightening as it is loving. She can exist. </p><p>There is though that she does not know how to exist. </p><p>Which, Sascha thinks, is a very interesting thought. Surely she had existed before in the Net. Her empathic abilities had been hidden, but she had <i>been</i> in some form or another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pollen and stars and hinges

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spyglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spyglass/gifts), [tosca1390](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/gifts), [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts), [katayla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katayla/gifts).



> I wanted something post Slave to Sensation that dealt with the fact that Sascha probably doesn't recognize emotions all too easily having hidden them for so long, and also how the mating bond and blood bonds would work when she cannot recognize them and she just is feeling their emotions.

Time passes and nothing happens that they have waited with tight throats and heavy souls for. Nothing as predicted. There is no slow waning of energy. No decline in strength. She breathes in and out. She sleeps. She eats. She feels her heart beat steady underneath the thin skin of her wrist. She is alive. Lucas is alive. That is enough. 

The Web of Stars feeds her psychic mind and she can be now. Reassurance in the form of something new and all together frightening as it is loving. She can exist. 

 

 

 

There is though that she does not know how to exist. 

Which, Sascha thinks, is a very interesting thought. Surely she had existed before in the Net. Her empathic abilities had been hidden, but she had _been_ in some form or another. 

Lucas always snarls at that idea. “That’s no way of living, darling,” he says, green eyes bright across from her in the dim evening light of their aerie. 

She still has not sorted her thoughts out on _before_ from now, and it is his anger that simmers through the bond with that statement. But now she is something else. As if half of her mind had awoken and cannot tell how to merge into what had been for twenty six years. 

There is no instruction manuel she can turn to. No Net for her to comb through in secret; not that she would find anything, she is certain that the Council took care of that. No downloadable treatise. There is something that holds her words and fears and trepidations on her tongue. Pack is Pack, but that holds no particular meaning, no definition that she can ascribe to in order to know the mechanisms for how to approach or discuss. There is too much to learn. It is overwhelming, but more so it leaves her yearning to already _know_. 

She is blind in a way. A thought that leaves her with a sour taste. 

 

 

Sascha cannot cook. 

Psy nutritional plans hold nothing of the flavors, spices, herbs and their combinations. Bland and designed for sustenance only, it’s all she’s had for nearly three decades. 

She tries though, but even she can tell that tonight’s chicken has no basic salt or pepper. She makes a face as she chews it, free to move her facial muscles even though it’s a copy of expressions she has seen other Pack members make. Although part of her mind tells her that there is no possible way for this meat to taste good, there’s content in her mind as well. Looking up over the wooden table, she sees Lucas eating. His eyes are half-lidded, lazy and sated, the lines of his face slack. “This is bad,” she says. 

Vibrant green eyes look up to her, and a tiny smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. She is getting better at facial movements, and this smile tells her that he’s teasing. “Not so bad, kitten.” 

Sascha purses her mouth. “You’re lying to me?” It is a question because this lie is different. She can tell. Lies in the Net are for business, for profit, for survival. Lies here, outside, have different layers. 

Lucas cocks his head to the side, mouth stretching into a wider smile. “A white lie.” 

Her mind recalls the definition. “An unimportant lie said in the interests of tact or politeness.” 

Eyes flash with that luminescence for a long pause, and then, “So technical.” His words are a low purr that reach across the space between them and she catches his intent. 

Still there is something that causes a crease to form between her eyebrows. “I liked it,” she says to the plate in front of her. 

Lucas laughs. “That’s because your tongue’s been so repressed.” 

His statement is in jest, a tease, but the crease doesn’t go away. 

 

 

 

Their bed has become a place of comfort. It’s not just where they sleep, where they touch, but it is a refuge when her mind becomes too jumbled from the press of emotions of the Pack. Sometimes she needs that. The comforter has been pushed down to the foot of the bed, partially hanging off to trail on the floor. Cool air wafts in from the opened windows, stirring the vines that hang lazy on the walls and ceiling. It’s pleasant with the noise from the forest. 

Lucas’s palm is warm and heavy as his hand settles on the curve of her waist. His fingertips catch on the cotton of his shirt she’s wearing. A lazy smirk pulls at the sides of his mouth. “I like you in my shirt.” 

It’s the same one that Tammy had given her to wear. That seemed so long ago and the memory dredges up a distasteful reminder of how the mating bond had come between them. She shies from that thought and drowns herself in him. 

She makes a low noise in her throat when his mouth presses wet kisses against the side of her neck. His nose brushes, a tickling sensation. Her fingers flutter on his shoulder, her body turning towards him. He is so much, everything around her. 

“It has to be better than those clothes you used to wear. Softer,” Lucas murmurs when he takes a pause in marking her with tiny nips from blunt teeth. 

“You like it,” she answers, curving her hand to slide up into his hair. 

He pauses and pulls back to catch her eyes. “But do you?” 

This isn’t the first time he’s asked her what she likes and doesn’t. He’s a vocal lover, her mate, but the longer it takes her to formulate a response to his question here and now, the stiller he becomes. She has the distinct knowing that it’s the panther looking at her. 

Sascha can see the reflection of her eyes in his bright green gaze, watches the white pricks of starlight fade in brilliance to dull dimness. “I,” she finds her throat catches, and the sentence is finished in forcefulness that she cannot hide this. “Do not know.” 

Lucas tilts his head, eyes gleaming green and bright. “But you know I do.” 

His statement is heavy and he has put it together. 

_so you like what I like, not you_ is the unfinished part to his sentence. 

 

 

 

Sascha finds that she does not like solidarity when she doesn’t wish for it. This she can tell and pick out as her own.

Lucas and Pack have drowned her and spoiled her in sensations. They have shown her what it means to truly _live_ without the shields and barriers she’d had to keep in the Net. It is disarming to be so alone, the stark absence of it all. 

The kitchen of their aerie is quiet. The only sounds have been from when she’d made tea earlier in the hour. Now, the cup sits cold next to her elbow. She’s unchanged from the t-shirt she’d worn to bed, her knees drawn up to her chest as she sits at the table. Her hair remains unbraided. 

A sound and her mind registers that Lucas has returned. Those heavy eyes had watched her for several moments after his statement last night, and then when she’d not responded he’d rolled from the bed to disappear. She’d felt him, his presence constant due to the bond, but he’d not been there with her. His absence has weighed on her. Claws climbing the side of the tree and then feet on the landing. 

She can tell from the sweat shining on his bare chest that he’d been running. Tracking his movements from the entrance to the kitchen’s sink, she eyes the way his jeans hang low on his hips. Her mate is stunning in either form she can appreciate. 

Lucas drains half a glass of water before suddenly pausing, turning his head to stare at her. “Sascha, you’re cold.” 

Wondering at how he knew, she watches him stalk around the table to retrieve something down the hall. A blanket, she finds out when he comes back, and then she sees that indeed the hair on her arms is raised and her skin pebbled. He kneels down next to her, dark hair sliding across his neck. 

Fights, she thinks as he grumbles and tucks the blanket around her shoulders and body, under her legs, big hands uncertain as they rest gingerly on her now covered knees, are not uncommon. In the Net, fights happened over business deals, ended in death. Lucas and she had fought already in their mating. His forcement of her into accepting the bond to save her life had only just now been worked through. 

He’s afraid to touch her. Changelings need touch, a fundamental foundation to their race. He could have warmed her through the heat of his own body, but he’d gotten a blanket instead. He is afraid, and so is she. Her throat convulses, feels dry and thick. 

“I was waiting for you,” Sascha says when she thinks she can, when she cannot take the bowed nature of his head or the slow careful movements of his thumbs against her clothed knees. 

“You could have waited in clothes,” he admonishes. It touches her somewhere through her fretting that he can still be stuffy about her wellbeing. 

“I thought you liked me wearing nothing.” 

His face snaps up, his gaze dark and troubled. “That’s the problem.” 

She shifts in the chair, wanting to curve herself against him. “It was a jest.”

Lucas’s mouth tightens. “Doesn’t change the problem, kitten. You lied to me.” 

A firm shake of her head. “I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell.” 

That gets her a bit of a quirk of his mouth, but he does not let her off. “You have to tell, Sascha. No secrets.” 

The bond shudders between them, and she feels his worry and concern and anger. Clarity and she realizes that the anger is for the fact that he cannot touch her psychic mind in a way to protect her. _Oh_

Clearing her dry throat, she shifts her restless hands till they touch overtop his and speaks. “The bond between us and my abilities creates a feedback loop. My empathic nature soaks up the resonations from people around me. From you.”

He turns his wrists, twines their fingers together. A nod and deeply intelligent eyes hold her gaze. “Like a sponge.” 

She nods. “Yes. But I have no filter for it. No way to process.” Her voice rises in pitch. “I know nothing on how to do it. How to stop it or control it.” 

Lucas shushes her with a soothing noise and strokes his fingers up her forearms, up and down. “You didn’t have a teacher, Sascha. They stifled you on purpose. You had to hide.” 

Logically she knows he is right, but still it is not enough. She sinks into his touch though. “I have no way to process. I think,” she pauses, swiping her tongue over her lip, “that it has been easier to simply drown in you and others than process it out.” 

A low growl that fills the kitchen space, his fingers enclosing around her arms. “That is no life.” 

“It scares me, Lucas.” An admission that she has never been allowed to make, one that still hurts, but he is the only one she could ever make it to.

“We’ll do it together.” A promise, so sure his vow, and she knows he means it. 

“Will you hold me now? I’d like that.” She barely gets her question out before Lucas is shifting to sit flat on the floor, hands sliding to her waist and pulling her to rest in his lap, against his chest. Her head fits on the slope of his shoulder, next to his neck where she can breathe in the salt sweat of his skin. He strokes a cupped palm over her scalp. “I am not pleased you left,” she says.

Lucas turns his head to kiss the corner of her mouth. “See, you can do it.” 

Sascha narrows her eyes at him. “I did not like you gone.” 

He curses low under his breath, an apology humming across the bond. “I’m sorry, kitten. You know I wouldn’t leave you right.” 

She doesn’t answer. Turns her head so her forehead touches his neck, under his jawline. 

“Never,” he swears, filling the bond with proprietary possessiveness, his love washing over her. “We’ll figure it out together.” 

 

 

 

“I like this,” Sascha tells Tamsyn when she visits the next day. She has been trying to strengthen the bonds with the other Pack members, spending time with the healer and the sentinels. 

Tammy cuts her own slice of the chocolate pie and puts it on her plate. A warm smile, “Well I thought you would.” 

Sascha eats the sweet treat in neat little bites from her fork. When it is done, she sets the utensil down and looks across the table. “I am supposed to practice my own feelings and thoughts. Saying them out loud helps to process them apart from yours.” Verbal cues require extra mental steps. An annoying system but efficient for the moment. 

The healer’s face creases with concern. “Are you not well?” 

She had not thought to disclose everything to the other woman, but Tammy is a friend, a Pack member who has shown her love and care for Sascha. There are confidences to keep that are between Lucas and her, but this she can divulge in part. “I am having trouble separating out what my feelings are from others around me.” 

Tammy nods thoughtfully, her hair shiny in the outside sun’s light. A little ways away from them behind the house, the twin cubs play in the cool autumn air. “You’ve spent so long disregarding emotions that it would be hard for you to recognize them. And I am sure that we don’t help as much as we think we do.” 

“You do-“ Sascha rushes to assure but finds herself cut off with the healer’s bright laugh. 

“You are too nice, Sascha.” A brush of fingers across her cheek. “There’s no offense. I am certain we are too much at times, and Lucas’s dominance cannot be anything but so much even regularly.”

Sascha reflects, as Tammy manages to feed her yet another piece of pie, that the healer knows more than what any Psy in the Net would give her credit for. 

 

 

 

It is Mercy who gives her the idea. 

Sascha cannot go into the city so close to defecting from the Net. A target still exists on her back. She needs clothes though. It’s Mercy who volunteers to buy her some things to replace the meager belongings she’d escaped with. 

“Surely you don’t want to wear those suits forever?” Mercy’d teased, and she’d agreed readily. 

The sentinel’s cabin is neat and tidy, but holds knicknacks and personal reminders that the place is completely Mercy’s. Sascha notes the bright colors and photographs that tell of Latin American places. It is a restful place after having spent the morning helping Brenna repair her mind in the SnowDancer den. 

Mercy lays out the jeans and shirts and tops on her low-couch. “Alright, I wasn’t sure what you’d like so I got a bit of everything.” 

She fingers each item, aware that Mercy is watching behind her, a faint smile on her face. The jeans she likes the looks of, knowing they will be more comfortable than her old tailored pants. She touches a pale pink sweater and frowns. “This is itchy.” 

Mercy touches the sweater also, humming low in her throat. “It might be too sensitive for your skin.” 

“It’s abrasive. It’ll be annoying.” 

The other woman smiles and shrugs her shoulders. “I’ll keep it. We’re close enough in height.” 

Heat blooms over her cheeks when she notices what rests on the cushions after the sweaters. Jewel toned lace and silk. 

Mercy’s grin is full cat and her tone drops low as she touches Sascha’s shoulder. “You could use some nice things. I’m sure Lucas will appreciate too.” 

The lingerie is far more like what she’d worn in her dreams shared with Lucas than any of the standard bras and panties the Psy wore uniformly. 

“Thank you,” she says softly, but her fingers remain on the cool soft fabric. 

 

 

 

In the bathroom of their aerie, Sascha smoothes her hands down over the satin of her robe. Her hair curls wildly over her shoulders and down her back, unbound from the braid and damp from her shower. Her cheeks flush from heat and excitement. Colors spark in her eyes, crowding the white stars. 

She steps out into their bedroom to find Lucas already resting against the headboard, long legs stretched out on the comforter. His sweats hang low on his hips again, more and more distracting each day. His throat rumbles as he looks up to her, green eyes glowing as they sweep over her form. “Darling.” 

“I want to try something,” she says before he can distract her. She can feel his pleasure at the sight of her, even still covered as she is in the robe, his delight in her being here with him after he’d spent the day in the city, his concern that she be alright. Letting his emotions settle in her, she does not follow them, does not hold them as tight to her. She wants for herself. 

A cat’s grin as he sets aside papers she knows are business contracts; he’d said so over dinner. “Alright,” low and deep. 

Sascha undoes the tie on the robe, letting the cloth part before shrugging her shoulder so it pools to the floor. The navy color she’d picked especially because she liked the sheen of the fabric against her skin. She bites her lip and blushes further when the rumble changes to a deeper growl. 

“Come here,” Lucas orders, attention already fully divested now on her. His eyes skitter all over body, unable to stay on her face or her breasts or her bared stomach or the parts where the panties don’t fully cover her ass. 

She laughs, soft and delighted, shaking her head. Her feet she keeps fully planted against the floor. “You know how I told you I used to read the Kama Sutra for recitational purposes?” 

A smirk and his tone is wicked when he leans forward. “For recitational purposes, certainly, kitten.” 

She ignores his flirtation. “I want to try one. You have to behave.” 

Another rumble and a snap of teeth, but he settles back against the headboard. “Alright.” 

Sascha eyes him and takes a step forward. “Promise?” 

White shiny teeth in his grin. “Promise.” 

She can feel it too, his promise, and so she eliminates the distance between him and her, climbs up the bed to flow into his lap. She palms his bare shoulders, finding the feeling of the coarseness of his jeans against her bare skin and silk and lace pleasing. Telling him, she bends to his mouth when his hands settle on her hips. “I like how you feel against me.” 

Lucas bites her chin, a quick nip and then a nuzzle of his nose against her cheek. “Yeah?” 

“Mhmm,” she hums. “It’s nice. It makes me happy. You looking at me in this, like this. The lace and silk is nice too, makes me feel nice.” 

It’s a babble of words that she cannot stop and he only encourages her, murmuring to her breastbone, “so damn pretty” before biting her nipple through the fabric of the bra. 

She doesn’t stop talking throughout the entire act. Doesn’t stop as he focuses his attention on her breasts. Jerks and stutters when he slides a hand down between her legs. Protests when he tears the fabric, makes him swear he’ll buy her more, gets a promise that he’ll buy her a whole store. This position requires one partner to sit cross-legged while the other does the majority of the work on top. It puts her so close to him, and the feeling of him inside her after he’s gotten rid of his sweats this way is beyond what she can put into words. Their hips find the rhythm. 

“There are many others too,” she says after when they’ve fallen so their heads are at the foot of their bed. 

Lucas pets her hip, pleased and lazy. “We’ll do them together.” 

“I’m happy,” she says and touches his hair. 

His eyes shine luminescent for a moment, and she knows he gets what she means beyond the simplistic. “Good,” and kisses her. 

 

 

 

“I am not pleased,” Sascha says, her hands on her hips as Lucas laughs in their kitchen. Broken pasta noodles litter the floor and sauce dots the counter. He won’t stop laughing, clutching one hand on the counter. 

She stamps her foot and exhales. “Oh you make me so mad. I hate you.” 

He swallows a snort and stares at her. 

Realizing what she’d said, she slaps a hand over her mouth. “Oh no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-“ 

But then he’s laughing again, outrageously loud, and reaching for her, grabbing at her waist and lifting her up. He spins her. 

His joy mingles with her own and she’s laughing too, realizing why he’s so happy. She locks her legs around his hips and lets him spin her down the hall, tumbling her into their bed. 

 

 

 

It has been weeks now since she’d defected from the Net. They are both alive, but it is not till Tammy and Mercy mention something over lunch one day that Sascha realizes Lucas and she haven’t done something. 

“You didn’t have a mating ceremony.” 

Sascha searches her memory bank for a definition to apply to the word. “I do not have a definition for that.” 

A slow laugh from outside the cabin where Vaughn holds the perimeter. “Still so logical.” 

She frowns and stares at the two women next to her on the porch. “Is that bad?” 

“Shut up, Vaughn,” Mercy hollers to the forest and its trees. She turns back to Sascha. “A mating ceremony is to celebrate when two people mate in the Pack.” 

Sascha purses her lips. “Like a party?” The leopards are social creatures, and parties and celebrations not uncommon at all. 

Tammy smiles. “Yes, but one just for the two. And since Lucas is alpha, it’s bigger when an alpha takes a mate. We didn’t have one yet because,” her voice trails off, a frown flitting over her face. 

“Because we didn’t think Lucas or I would live longer than a few months,” Sascha finishes the thought. 

The healer reaches for her with her calloused hands, taking her own into them and squeezing their fingers together. “But you both did and you’re ours now, Sascha. We need to celebrate. To love you and love you both.” 

She frowns and asks slowly, “Do I have to cook?” 

A bark of laughter comes from the trees. 

 

 

 

The Pack plans the majority of the mating ceremony. 

This will be the first time she interacts with all of them together, the entire territory from the fringes of the forest to those in the city all coming. She has gone from group to group, greeted and tried to spend time with the cats and human members to let them and her get used to each other. An agreeable strategy for both importance of each position in the Pack, but also so as not to fray on her shields. No wolves tonight, the congratulations from Hawke having gotten a snarl from Lucas on the phone. 

Sascha had insisted on there being chocolate though. And in picking out her dress. 

“You’re really liking this color,” Lucas says against the warm skin of her neck, fingertips touching the shiny gold beading on her shoulders. The skirt dips in at her waist and flares out to her ankles, a middle split the only bit of revealing skin as the dress covered her shoulders and arms and back. 

She smiles slyly at him from the mirror. “I thought it’d be a nice reminder of another thing you liked on me.” She bends her neck when he growls and bites her. “Too bad you destroyed them, I’d have worn them underneath.” 

He raises his head and grins. “Oh but come and see.” 

Sascha follows him when he tugs them into their bedroom, leading her to wooden dresser. “What’s this?”

“A gift,” he says and taps the top drawer. 

“Oh,” she exhales. “I didn’t realize gifts were customary.”

“You’re gift enough.” He nips her jawline and nudges her attention to the drawer. “Open.” 

“But I feel bad,” she says while pulling the handle back. A gasp as she sees what he’s done, a rainbow of lace and silk and satin in every pale color and jewel tone, including a navy set. 

He kisses her heated cheek, smile bordering on a smirk. “You can make it up to me,” he teases. 

Turning in his arms, Sascha kisses him fiercely, her teeth clacking against his. “I love you.” Another kiss before he can respond. “I love you so much. Thank you for being mine and having me.” 

Lucas’s eyes glow and his hands cradle her face, thumbs sweeping across her cheeks. “Always.” 

Her fingers fully entwined with his, her side against the clean cut of his suit, she lets him lead her through the forest towards the party. She feels ready, her mind bursting with so much. But it’s in the best way possible. A work in progress, she feels better each inhale and exhale.

 

 

 

Later, Sascha glares as Lucas snatches the chocolate treat from her fingers and eats it straight in front of her eyes. 

Hands on her hips. “I am not pleased.”


End file.
